Thursday, January 24, 2013

January Madness results!

The final Knesset election results are in! (This guide may help if you can’t remember which party is which.)

Likud Beiteinu 31

Yesh Atid 19

Labor 15

Habayit Hayehudi (The Jewish Home) 12

Shas 11

United Torah Judaism 7

Hatenua 6

Meretz 6

United Arab List – Ta’al 4

Hadash 4

Balad 3

Kadima 2

Otzma Leyisrael

Am Shalem

Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf)

Koach Lehashpia

Eretz Hadasha

Hayisraelim

Greens

Dor Bonei Haaretz

Chaim Bechavod

Da’am – Workers Party

Tzedek Hevrati

Achim Anachnu (We Are Brothers)

Pirates

Kulanu Haverim Na Nach

Economics Party

Mitkademet Liberalit Democratit (Leeder)

Or (Light)

Brit Olam

Hatikva Leshinui

Moreshet Avot

(“But wait!” you say. “This is only 32 parties! I thought there were
34!” That’s right. The breakaway haredi party Netzach dropped out
last week, having resolved its differences with United Torah Judaism.
Atid Echad (One Future) also dropped out two days before the election –
apparently pornography wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list of issues in
this election.)

So first of all, congratulations to everyone who participated in
January Madness 2013! Given how unpredictable Israeli elections can be,
it takes a lot of courage to make a prediction and put it out there in
public. No one correctly predicted all 120 Knesset seats, but everyone
got some of them right.

But even more so, congratulations to the winners!!! Both Lev Polinsky in New York NY and Eyal
in Israel correctly predicted 112 of the 120 Knesset seats. (While no
one predicted that Yesh Atid would win 19 seats, Lev Polinsky came the
closest, with 15.)

So we had to go to tiebreakers. On the first tiebreaker (which party
that doesn’t make it into the Knesset will come closest?), Lev Polinsky
guessed Am Shalem and Eyal guessed the Greens. Since neither picked
the right-wing Otzma Leyisrael (instead, both of them incorrectly
predicted that Otzma Leyisrael would win Knesset seats), we go to the
second tiebreaker (which party will come in last place?). Again, no
exact matches: Lev Polinsky picked Kulanu Haverim, and Eyal picked
Eretz Hadasha. So now we go back to the first tiebreaker. Since Am
Shalem (2nd place among the parties that didn’t make it in) did better
than the Greens (7th place), Eyal wins second place, and Lev Polinsky is the 2013 January Madness champion!

Here is a message from our champion (who also wins a copy of the Comic Torah):

I am thrilled to have won, and I will print and display my winner’s
certificate proudly alongside my HRH Assassin winner’s certificate –
also won under BZ’s supervision. I hope he gets a job as the head of the
Multi-State Lottery Association soon.

I enjoyed having an excuse to learn about all the marginal Israeli
parties, like Kadima. I look forward to repeating this exercise in a few
months.

Finally, I have been negligent in making my suggested contribution,
so if people want to make suggestions for places to contribute in the
comments, I am all ears.

And a message from our runner-up, who also wins a copy of Ghettoblaster:

I was really surprised to win. All i did was look at
Wikipedia’s list of predictions, and basically used that. I changed it a
bit, adding a bit to the right, which might explain why i missed 8. But
i still never expected to get 93⅓%!

They had a warning that it might not add up to 120 seats, so to
check, i wrote a short program to prepare it for addition – replace
whitespace with +; then i pasted into Google. I’m actually a pretty good
programmer; i created typeint.com and the associated projects from scratch; and i also host a forum for programmers at coders-shed.com.
Speaking of TypeINT, i’m sure that some readers have needed to type in
Hebrew, but were unsure how to. TypeR, by TypeINT is the perfect
solution.

I hope that the 19th Kenneset proves some early predictions wrong and doesn’t end a disaster.

Finally, honorable mention goes to everyone who got the tiebreaker
questions right. On the first tiebreaker question, congratulations to James Bier in Tucson AZ, David in Philadelphia, David Meyer in College Park MD, Mike Schultz in Karmiel, Tzemah, and Eliana
in DC, all of whom picked Otzma Leyisrael as the top party not to make
it over the threshold. On the second question, congratulations to David W. Eisen in Bet Shemesh and Ethan Tucker
in Bronx NY, who predicted that Moreshet Avot would come in last. (I
never could figure out what Moreshet Avot’s story was, and apparently
neither could anyone else, except for 461 voters.) And since we didn’t
get the news about the two parties dropping out in time to remove them
from the contest entrance form, we’ll also give honorable mention to James Bier in Tucson AZ (again) and Itamar Landau
in Jerusalem, both of whom picked One Future to come in last place
(since one could argue that 0 is less than 461). (The most popular
choice for this question was the Pirate Party. They weren’t even in the
bottom seven! The lesson is never underestimate pirates.)

Thanks for playing, everyone! The next Knesset election will be
Tuesday, November 7, 2017 (yes, that’s also Election Day in US
jurisdictions that hold elections in odd-numbered years), unless
elections are called earlier than that (which they almost certainly
will).